TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* The Trashfuture Podcast Ltd FY24 Pension Allocation Call

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Riley, November, and Hussein review some of TF Ltd’s strategic investments in the Humane Pin and the Apple Vision Pro, before moving on to look at the replacement of more humans in creative roles with ChatGPT in the UK entertainment industry, the desire of UK armed police officers to be treated like their American counterparts, and finally a reading on the inner life of Masayoshi Son… as we of course do at every pension fund allocation meeting. Get the whole episode on Patreon here. *T-SHIRT ALERT* Two new t-shirt designs—Avignon Popes and Banished to the Lagoon—are available for pre-order on our website. Get them here!  *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s UK Tour here: https://miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

Unfortunately, Apple has stopped making the Vision Pro Mixed Reality headset because no one bought it. How many did they make in total by the way? Like thousands. Like not many. Okay, yeah. They didn't make many at all and they're gonna be like um... It's a collector's item, you know? Yeah! It's boxed fresh! And in 10 years time I'm gonna be wearing my my Apple Vision Pro and people are going to be

like, why do you have this? Why are you wearing this? And my answer is going to be, it says something about society. The funny thing is you could conceivably do that with Google Glass because they are glasses, they're clear, but if you recall the Apple Vision Pro, it's opaque until it's on because it just projects a screen. Maybe by the time they come back in, they're just going to normalize walking around not being able to see anything.

Maybe we should, you know? I wonder whether like Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas just ruined like wearable glasses for everyone. Cause we didn't, he was one who like sort of tried to do the thing first, right? And it was just very off putting. And I do wonder whether like it's the curse of Will.i.am, but it's kind of caused us to just like... A lot like the X factor then.

Yeah. Like nothing that will I am has ever endorsed has ever taken. He was a huge metaverse guy. Well, okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He was a huge like metaverse booster as well. He was, he was big into like into wearables. Hold on. I'm going to, I'm going Will.i.am endorses and see what we're dealing with here. Will.i.am endorses... Well, he endorsed Hillary, so already as the first result, your theory is sort of like,

strong. He endorsed the concept of STEM education, which I think is also, you know, about as successful. Mega upload, apparently? DORIS MEGA UPLODE? Yeah, like 2011, along with Diddy and Kanye West. I don't know why. I mean, Mega Uplode is still a great place to get bootleg, kind of like, out of print books and films and stuff, and so, maybe he was right on that specific thing, but it's a great way of piracying stuff from questionable sites based in Russia. He endorsed ADHD.

Not like, treating ADHD, not even like normalizing ADHD, but like, he's like, pro ADHD. He's like, um, because apparently like, fuels his creativity. Which, um, cool. ZACH Alright, Will.i.am founded an AI startup called FYI. ALICE Uh huh. Man just loves letters. ZACH It still seems to exist, well. It is a, wouldn't you know it? It's a productivity tool. That's like a combination of messenger and AI co-pilot says it combines messaging and collaboration

tools with file management and content publishing features to create an all in one experience. It makes creative teams more productive. You got to have ADHD for it to work though. Well, it's a planner basically. He's, he has made a kind of AI planner for creatives that will also like make music for you, it seems. I mean, I got a really nice notebook the other week. And I'm thinking if I just walk around having like taped that over my eyes, I'm getting functionally the same experience as having this like planner uploaded into like a Google vision. So I may just do this, you know?

Got a pair of Google Glass on under there. I don't know enough about FYI to know what's funny about it, but it does look pretty stupid. This is like the world's lowest effort, like, short seller briefing. It's like, well, I don't actually know yet, but it seems like it's pretty stupid. So Hindenburg hired all the guys who trawl through bizarres to find like, to find evidence that your target for your short selling campaign was a magician. I don't have any of those guys left. Yeah.

The trash user research section has been fucking decimated. That's just me. Yeah. Yeah. If you get head hunted by Hindenburg, it's, it's like, I would love that job so much. Please please. That would be so awesome to do as a job. Like, yeah, my, my job is a hater.

That's the job that you do now, but like much better. I can't keep selling this to you. All right. All right. All right. Look, let's, let's get into the news because I intended that to last for two minutes. Let's go to the news section of the TF annual pension fund meeting. When we talk about the news.

Yeah. Yeah. And other AI news. This is, this has been all over sort of like the short form papers in London or in the UK, excuse me, that ITV, one of Britain's TV channels, if Milo were here he would be able to say, oh, ITV, it's this kind of thing. ALICE Yeah, it's one of Britain's remaining TV channels. RILEY Yeah. It is lauded as one of the TV channels that there are, in Britain. I think they do Love Island, right?

ALICE Mmhm, yeah. RILEY And like, Coronation Street, stuff like this. ALICE They do a lot of like, reality, they do a lot of soaps. Just as you said, it's primarily like, light entertainment, with like a smattering of drama. Like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, basically. A light entertainment. We're not out of touch.

What's ITV like? I don't know, kind of the Mikado, I guess? Pretty little girls from the Villa R. Wee. That's not even like, Ivory Tower left, is it? That's something far advanced of that. There's like an Ivory Tower above the Iv are we. Uh huh. That's not even like ivory tower left, is it? That's something far advanced of that. There's like an ivory tower above the ivory tower. That's like the fucking Gorman gust of which the ivory tower is like one minor foothill. It's the ivory zeppelin which is very quickly crashing.

Yeah, just like dangling from the fucking like a rope down from the ivory zepp zeppelin to be like i say this is you know this tv channel we have is very interesting how does it relate to the works of gilbert sullivan i've just been reading more of the obri macerate books i'm very i'm feeling very 19th century even though we're not talking about them for left unread for a while i cannot stop podcasters lot is not a happy one. Subject, of course, to the needs of the podcast. Uh-huh. So, no, I want to talk about this. ITV has posted an advert for a new job, which is a new role that is head of AI, saying the

role will include spearheading quote, AI-driven innovations in content creation for TV, films, and digital first content across ITV studios. Yeah. They're hiring a digital prophet. Yeah. They're hiring someone who will ask God what light entertainment show to make. And that guy just happens to be Will.I.Am. It includes AI generated ideation, character development, and enhanced production graphics.

The executive will be a quote visionary who will drive the strategy and execution of AI driven transformation at the broadcaster and shape the future of content creation. So there you go. Remember how anytime I see this I put I have a little sort of mental category that I put it in which is hey how come all of the stuff that's getting automated is like coming up with the story or making the painting or doing the drawing as opposed to like doing the dishes? Yeah well like the promise of AI was always like we're gonna automate the boring stuff so you can do the fun stuff, and what we've done instead is we're gonna automate the fun

stuff so you can do the boring stuff. What on earth? It's like if you bait the bomb disposal robot, the guy on the other end of the wire. Yeah, it's like, we've automated the strenuous button pushing that tells you which wire to cut. Yeah, the bomb disposal crew roll up to the event and there's like a robot behind 50 layers of sandbags controlling a wire leading to like a guy who has to walk up to the bomb and like defuse it. Yeah, look, it's going to save you a lot of finger strain, I suppose.

My button pushing finger. No, no, it's like, you could even ask, what is AI generated ideation and character development, actually? ALICE If you wanted to be cynical, you could say, it's not that different from the way that TV commissioning editors work already, right? Which is kind of like, throw stuff at the wall, and then buy someone else's idea. RILEY Well, it's not even that, because that used to be how TV commissioning worked.

And sometimes you get some very interesting stuff, sometimes you get some very unique stuff. The thing about every type of commissioning at the moment, especially in the UK right now, is just that the commissioning has either all dried up because no one's commissioning anything and it's also very, very risk averse, right? And so the stuff that will get commissioned are usually just like spin-offs, copies of things. My sort of area that I kind of know a little bit more about are commissioning for radio

and podcasts. And I don't know if anyone's listened to a BBC Sounds podcast for a while, but they are not particularly good both in terms of their production and also in terms of their content. And one example is a show that my wife and I listened to fairly recently on BBC Sounds, the national broadcast, the national app of the broadcaster was... The national podcasting service. Well basically yes, right? In technical terms. One of their flagship shows is a true crime show where two people sit on a remote call, like what we're doing at the moment and talk about true crime stories that they've read elsewhere. That's it.

Jesus. I mean, like- One of them is just like, here's a crime story that I've just read about and they'll tell the story basically like, and the first and only episode that we kind of, we very begrudgingly got through because I was just so amazed by it, was someone who had pretty much, who began this like, well, here's what the Wikipedia says about this case. Okay. Very horribly like, a lot of fine podcasts. I'm sorry. I'll start again.

But like the thing, the thing to bear in mind is that like, there is this just like, there's no risk appetite to actually commission anything new, right? And so what the AI just seems, the AI disorder seems to be an extension in this ongoing process, you know, where instead of you have a human being like, oh, you should do another true crime show about a true crime show, you'll have an AI that basically says that. And they might sort of throw in like, you know, maybe you should get- NARES You should get Ant and Dec on this true crime podcast.

DERK Yeah, maybe Ant and Dec should do the true crime podcast where Ant tells Dec what he's read on Wikipedia. Or what if Ant and Dec committed a true crime? That would be an interesting angle. Weirdly, weirdly, I do have an Ant and Dec update, which is that they were peripherally involved with Mohammed bin Salman's like takeover of Newcastle United. What? Because there were some, some, some, I don't know why I remember this, some texts came

out from, got leaked from the promoter who was trying to like, or the PR who was trying to organize all this stuff for MBS, and she's like, oh we'll get like Ant and Dec to plug this on socials. You know, stay woke, right? Because if you think Ant and Dec's retweets are organic, they're actually being controlled from fucking Riyadh.